


Jail Break

by blarfkey



Series: Come Together [1]
Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Emotionally Constipated Erik, Erik's terrifying, Gen, Mooning, No one knows what the hell they're doing, Peter's freaked, awkward father/son bonding!, bratty teenagers, dadneto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 16:24:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2276493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blarfkey/pseuds/blarfkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's totally normal in Suburban America for the dad to pick up his rebellious teenager from jail, right? Even when it's the Pentagon instead of the local police station, and your dad is a Mutant Supremacist Assassin and America's Most Wanted who didn't post bail so much as murdered all the guards? </p><p>Whatever. Peter will take what he can get at this point, even if it means the most painfully awkward road trip in the history of the universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jail Break

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Polski available: [Ucieczka z więzienia](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6946717) by [Havokku](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Havokku/pseuds/Havokku)



Look, it’s not his fault, okay? How the holy hell was he supposed to know the guy he broke out of prison was driving the crazy train to crazy town? The guy could have been innocently imprisoned. It happened all the time. Peter didn’t even know the guy assassinated the president until after he broke him out.

Besides, that Xavier cat seemed pretty sane even if he did look like he crawled out from under a bridge, so Peter was just following his lead.  
It’s also not his fault that he was born with freaky gray hair like a grandpa and therefore the most easily identifiable person on the Most Wanted list.

(It’s totally wicked being on the Most Wanted list. He is such a _boss_ ).

He could escape any time. Like ten seconds from now. These clowns can’t hold him, with their puny handcuffs and puny guards and puny cameras. He’s really just here, in a holding cell at the Pentagon, because he wants to be.

Honest. He’s always wanted to know if the movies were right. Are they going to good-cop, bad-cop him? Do they all eat donuts? Does the coffee taste like shit? Coffee always tastes like shit in the movies. Cops and Feds are always swigging it down and giving a manly grimace and says it tastes like shit but they drink it anyway cause crime doesn’t stop because the coffee tastes like shit, you know?

So yeah. He could leave any time.

Any time.

Like right now.

The cuffs nearly take his hands off when Peter tries to speed out of them, the table falling over on his knees with a god awful fucking squeal. His back slams in the wall, knocking the breath out of him, arms bleeding all over his jeans from the scrapes.

Goddamn it, he liked these jeans. That shit doesn’t wash out. (Or maybe it does. He’ll have to ask his mom. Girls know how to get blood out of stuff, right? They kinda have to.)

He’s fucked, isn’t he?

No!

It’s cool! It’s totally cool. He’ll just wait until someone shows up and then he’ll get them to bend down for a juicy secret and then he’ll steal the keys and uncuff himself and get the fuck out of Dodge.

  
Except nobody comes for a long, long time.

Peter naps slumped on the overturned table because he’s still cuffed to the damn thing, even though he knows he’ll wake up with back problems to go with the old man hair he’s got. But it’s whatever. He won’t give the rent-a-cop watching the security footage the satisfaction of looking uncomfortable and ready to cry for his momma.

(He kinda wants to cry for his momma. Not, like, because he needs her. But _for_ her. For the fact that here he is, her eldest pride and joy, in a Pentagon holding cell because he broke out a psycho murderer out of prison so he could try to kill the president again on national television and no wonder Peter is so fucked up if that who his fucking _dad_ is, Jesus ---)

No! He is not going to think about that. Peter Maximoff doesn’t have a dad. He’s a pure-grade bastard, right here, you’re looking at him Mr. Rent-A-Cop behind the camera. Peter can feel his judge-y eyes from here and suddenly he’s pissed again.

He jerks his head up and flips the camera off, but it feels flimsy and pathetic. He’s got something a lot longer and thicker than his middle finger to shake at the camera if he can reach the button of his pants.

Peter gets to his knees and pushes up close to where the handcuffs are wired to the dent in the table. The buttons and fly of his jeans come undone easily enough but shucking them down proves more difficult. Lying on the floor, he wiggles as best he can and uses his heels to push the fabric down and eventually, with a lot of shimmying, he’s got his pants and his boxers pulled down far enough to shake his bare ass at the camera.

“Looks like the moon’s out early, boys!” He crows right before the door slams open.

Peter’s first thought is one of triumph because he had to have seriously pissed someone off to get that quick of a reaction.  
His next thought is much more unpleasant because he knows what happens in prison to young, hot boys like him and here he is, shaking his bare ass and handcuffed to a table, and that’s kinky and all but he’s totally not ready for that and –

“What are you _doing_?”

Fun fact about Peter Maximoff: he would rather be eaten alive from the inside out by one of those freaky scarab beetles in mummy movies than sit still for more than five seconds at a time.

And yet at the sound of that voice, his body locks up and all his boundless energy speeds off into the night without him.

“Um.”

That’s it. That’s all that’s coming out. Peter looks in the eyes of his father, standing tall and proud in a three piece suit and a fedora, looking like a fucking mob boss, and all he can say is “um.”

Erik Lehnsherr murdered one president, tried to murder another president, and then spouted off a bunch of shit about murdering all the other humans so that the mutants could rule the world and he’s looking at Peter like _Peter’s_ the crazy one?

“I was mooning the security guy,” he explains and realizes too late that it doesn’t really prove his sanity by the way the man cocks a single eyebrow.

“I’m sure he would appreciate that if he were alive to watch it.”

Peter pulls his pants back up and tries very hard not to throw up. Is Lehnsherr (Magneto? Erik? Dad? What the fuck does he call this guy?) here to kill him, tie up loose ends before Peter can spill his guts to the feds?

Stay cool. Stay cool. Everything’s fine. He can still escape. Somehow. This guy can uproot entire stadiums but no one can catch the motherfucking Quicksilver. (except, you know, the Feds, but they played dirty, involving his mom like that).

“So, you giving yourself up, man?” Peter asks with the kind of bravado that pissed the Feds off before. He’s totally got this. “I guess that’s noble and all but, you know, I went through all that trouble. Shame to see it go to waste.”

( _Do you know karate?_

_No, but I know crazy._

God, that is not funny anymore).

“Quite the opposite. You broke me out of the Pentagon. I’m returning the favor.”

“Oh.”

Well fuck a duck.

“I bought us some time but it won’t last,” the man continues. He strides towards Peter, hand out stretched, and the handcuffs vibrate slightly before the left cuff unhooks from his wrist and slides off. The right side still dangles from his other wrist.

“You gonna finish the job?” Peter asks, jangling the cuffs.

“What happened to your arms?” Lenhsherr pulls Peter to him by the cuffs and examines the scrapes with rough, narrow fingers.

“Tried to run.” Peter shrugs his shoulders like his arms don’t feel like he set fire to them. Lenhsherr investigates the dried blood with a deep scowl and then, instead of undoing the second cuff, he hooks it over his own wrist and snaps it shut.

“What the fuck, dude!?”

“I know how fast you are,” says Lenhsherr wryly. “You have answers I seek. When you give them to me, I’ll release you.”

Something icy drops in the pit of Peter’s stomach.

_They say you can manipulate metal. My mom used to know a guy who could do that._

He had said those words so carelessly that day, more of a revelation he told himself aloud than anything directed at the strange dude he just fetched. He didn’t think much of it because there’s tons of mutants in the world, right? Surely more than one can move shit with their mind, right? It’s not like, out of the seven billion people in the world, it would be this asshole that his mother never talked about, right?

Stay cool, man. Stay cool. You don’t know what he’s going to ask. He might want to know more about Xavier for all the eye-fucking he did in the elevator. And how the holy hell is this guy his father when clearly all he wanted was Xavier’s homeless-looking ass?

“Yeah, sure. No prob. Can we get out of here now?”

Lehnsherr waves to the open door. “After you.”

Peter grabs the man (his _father_ – no! Stop that!) by the back of his head, feeling an uncomfortable deja-vu, and flies the both of them down hallways and past a row of dead guards (alive? Maybe they were alive. Maybe all that blood was from, like, a nosebleed or something) and into the dark parking lot.

“My-my car. Down the street. Black corvette.” Lehnsherr waves drunkenly to his right and Peter smirks before taking off again.

A corvette. At least the man has style. That’s one thing to be thankful for. Peter hovers over the driver side door, wondering how they are supposed to get in the car while they’re still handcuffed. The driver door pops open of its own accord.

“You crawl in first and I’ll follow.”

“Can I drive? I can totally drive, you know. Got my learners like, six months ago, and Xavier let me drive his rental all the way back to New York and I only hit the guard rail, like, twice.”

The glare Lehnsherr gives him would look just right on a serial killer. “No.”

Peter’s an arguer -- or as he likes to call it, a negotiator. The Negotiator. Like bad ass in a spy film, if he’s really honest. But the level of hurt behind that curt, frosty “no” is enough to shut Peter the fuck up.

“That’s cool. No prob.” Peter bites his lips to keep a hysterical giggle from escaping and ducks into the car, Lenhsherr hot on his heels.

With the flick of a wrist, Lehnsherr shuts the door and starts the car without touching the keys and okay, that’s totally boss. He takes a moment to probably keep himself from throwing up and then they peel out of the pentagon, tires squealing, into the night.

To Peter’s surprise and utter frustration, Lehnsherr keeps to the speed limit: a crippling, agonizing fifty five. So, attempted murder is good for the soul, but speeding is a no no? What the fuck? He wishes for a brief moment to steal the metal dude’s powers if only so he could push down the gas petal with his mind and maybe a cool finger flick.

“Jesus, can’t this thing go any faster?” Peter whines. He can’t help it. It physically hurts to go this slow with nothing but the occasional lamp post to distract him.

“It could,” says Lehnsherr. “I don’t need gas to power this car. I could levitate it and send us hurtling down the road at two hundred miles an hour.”

Peter’s eyes grow wide. “ _Seriously_? Dude that is so fucking _boss_!”

To his utter shock Lenhsherr grins and shows entirely too many teeth. It’s frankly the most terrifying thing Peter has ever seen. The guy looks like a goddamned shark or a serial killer clown. Jesus.

“Giddy-up, cowboy!” Peter slams a hand on the dashboard.

The shark- grin fades. “Tempting as that is, a flying car would be akin to a neon sign pointing to our escape.”

Oh. Damn. That’s probably true. Peter sighs and fiddles with the lock until they slide down on their own and refuse to budge. He sneaks a glance at Lehnsherr, whose teeth are now safely hidden behind the pressed line of his lips.

Despite going slower than a granny in the supermarket on Social Security Discount Day, D.C. melts away behind them and suddenly Peter has to wonder.  
“So, like, where the hell are we going?”

“You’re not going back home, if that’s what you’re asking.”

The car suddenly feels a bit thin on air and Peter takes a couple deep breaths. Holy fuck, this isn’t a jail break, it’s a goddamned _kidnapping_!  
Calm down, man, calm down. So it’s a kidnapping, so what? Eventually Lehnsherr will have to uncuff himself, or maybe Peter will beg to use the bathroom, and then he’s gone. He’s so gone. Pull your shit together, Maximoff. Everything is going to be fine.

“It’s not safe,” the man continues, as if Peter isn’t on the verge of a heart attack. “The cops will expect you to return there. We’re going somewhere else.”

Okay. That makes sense. But it could also be a convenient excuse to kidnap Peter and use him for nefarious purposes.

“Like where?”

Lehnsherr side-eyes Peter. “You’re going to have to answer something important before I tell you that.”

“Yeah?” Peter yanks on a lock of hair, a nervous habit from when his third grade teacher thought he had ADD.

“What is your mother’s first name?”

Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. Anything but that. Anything.

Play it cool, Maximoff. Play it cool.

“It’s . . .uhh . . .Magd-Maggie! It’s Maggie, you know, short for Margaret? Good ole Margaret Maximo – Maxim. Margaret Maxim.”

“Your last name is Maximoff.”

His stomach roils and he fiddles with the window roller. “She, uh, got divorced. Went back to her maiden name.”

That’s a good lie, right? Women do that all the time, it’s the age of feminism and shit. Except, judging by the way the car suddenly lurches off the road and into a dirt shoulder, slamming Peter against the door, Lehnsherr doesn’t buy it. He throws the car in park and leans across the console, close enough for Peter to smell his old man cologne (Seriously, who dresses up in a three piece suit and wears perfume to jail break a teenager?).

“I may not be a mind reader but I know when someone is lying to me,” he hisses. His eyes flash in the headlights of a passing car, looking murderous. “Your mother is Magda Maximoff.” It’s not a question.

Peter doesn’t really know what happened between her and Lehnsherr. She never talks about his dad. Like, ever. He found out about Lenhsherr by putting the pieces together himself. The mental manipulating hit a red flag, but it was the look on his mother’s face and the broken plate at her feet when Lehnsherr ranted on T.V. that really sold it. That and the fact that he has super speed when no one else in his family has any powers.

He doesn’t know how they ended, but it had to have been bad if she won’t talk about him. And for a long time he was pissed that she never let him contact his dad or even ask about him, but now Peter gets it. He totally fucking gets it, and for the first time tonight he is well and truly afraid.

“Dude, you’re not touching my mom. Not again. I will kill you, like seriously, I will kill you and you won’t be able to stop me if you even think about putting a hand on her, or my sister, _I will gut you like a goddamned fish_ –“

He knows it’s stupid to threaten a mass murderer while handcuffed in the car with him but he can’t help it. The words pour out of him, more begging than threatening, that makes him threaten all the harder to make up for it until Lenhsherr claps a hand over his mouth.

“I have no interest in killing Magda, _Gott in Himmel_! What kind of man do you think I am?”

Peter shoves his arm away. “Seriously?” His voice cracks like he’s fucking thirteen years old. “You just killed like fifteen people back there! You tried to murder the entire presidential cabinet on national fucking television! You told the whole nation you wanted to exterminate all the humans so what the fuck am I supposed to think?!”

He feels like he just got ejected out into space where there’s no air and no hope, his chest constricting so hard he wonders if his ribs are made of iron and Lehnsherr is squeezing them. Hot tears spill from the corners of his eyes and he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe –

“Kid! Look at me.” Strong fingers grip Peter’s chin, forcing his gaze to Lehnsherr’s wide eyes. Their grey-blue shade is uncomfortably familiar. “Hold your breath. Then breathe in slowly. Breathe out slowly.”

Peter clamps down on his spazzing lungs and released a long shaky breath. Lehnsherr coaxed him through breathing exercises until Peter’s lungs unclench and his head clears.

“I have no ill will towards your mother,” says Lehnsherr softly. “Or any other member of your family. They have nothing to fear from me. Calm your mind.”  
He hovers over Peter, his hand a warm, reassuring weight on Peter’s shoulder. For a split second he feels like a father.

Oh _fuck_ no. He jerks away from Lehnsherr’s grasp, smacking his head on the window.

“I’m cool, man. Totally cool,” he stammers. “All better now.”

Lehnsherr gives him a skeptical look before settling back into his seat and starting up the car. They pull back on the road and Peter leans his forehead on the cool glass and watches the street lights pass and fade away.

“I didn’t know about you.” Lehnsherr says. He takes the hat off and runs a hand through his short hair. “Your mother left without saying a word. I didn’t abandon you.”

Peter swallows. Lehnsherr sounds so fucking earnest, like he’s terrified that Peter won’t believe him. “Yeah, I know.” He clears his throat. “It’s cool, man. Like, we don’t have to talk about it.”

Seriously, Peter would rob a bank to bribe Lehnsherr from having this conversation.

Lehnsherr shoots Peter a look of disbelief. “You’re my _son_. Of course we have to talk about this.”

“What the hell is there to say? Are you going to tell me that if you knew, you’d stop all your -- whatever crazy bullshit you’ve been doing for the last seventeen years and raise me?”

It’s a stupid, secret, weak question that Peter has been wondering for as long as he can remember and he cannot fucking believe he just said it. Why can’t he keep his goddamned mouth shut? Judging from the stricken, guilty look that Lehnsherr wears and the heavy, damning silence that descends on them both, it’s clear he’s not going to get the answer he wants

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Peter mutters. “Probably for the best, you know, or else I’d be your president-murdering side kick or something. Mini-Magneto.”  
He snorts at the image of his toddler self in a Magneto helmet that slips over his eyes, even as the idea of being raised by a mass murderer makes him want to throw up. Thank God for deadbeat dads, right?

“I would have never raised you for killing,” Lehnsherr says finally. “You’re a child for Gott’s sake! I would have wanted you to be happy and at peace.”

“I was happy!” Peter snaps. “I mean, I am. Happy. I’m happy, okay?”

Which is a lie. Mostly a lie. He has a somewhat decent step-dad, but that never stopped him from wondering, his whole life, just who his father was and what he would think of Peter. He used to imagine all kinds of scenarios about running into his father, but, Jesus, none of them ever turned out like this. In his head, Peter’s father was Special Ops or a CEO or a King and not this crazy asshole. Now he gets the meeting he’s always dreamed about and he wants to jump out of the car.

“So you were raised well? You were provided for, you had friends?”

“Yes,” Peter says with a long suffering sigh. “Jesus. Can we please stop talking about this?”

Lehnsherr opens his mouth to retort before closing it again. They drive in more awkward silence, but Peter much prefers it over having conversations like that.

“You must think I’m insane,” says Lehnsherr after a while. There is a hard edge to his voice that makes the hairs on Peter’s neck stand on end.

“You told me you knew crazy,” says Peter slowly. “You weren’t kidding, were you?”

“I was being _facetious_.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Lehnsherr closes his eyes for a moment and Peter’s door crumples inward a bit. He jerks back towards the console.

“I didn’t murder Kennedy. I was trying to save him and I failed.” Lenhsherr opens his eyes and Peter’s door straightens itself out with a rusty squeal.  
Okay. So technically Peter busted an innocent man out of jail. That’s good. That can be used in court, right? Except . . .

“But you were going to murder Nixon, right?”

“ . . . yes. I was.”

Ugh. Of course.

“So why is one president okay and the other one not?”

“Kennedy was a mutant. He was one of us.”

“Yeah, but like, what if Kennedy was a major asshole? And what if Nixon was super nice?”

Erik glances over at him. “Your point?”

Peter rolls his eyes. “You can’t be like, well this guy is a mutant so he’s alright and this guy is a human so I’ll kill him.”

“Humans are like that to mutants all the time.”

“Really? Like when?”

The steering wheel dents around Lehnsherr’s fingers. “I assume you watched my address on the television so I hope you didn’t miss the mutant killing machines your precious president was endorsing.”

“Oh. Yeah. That was shitty.” Terrifying, actually, but Peter didn’t want to think about that. “Name another time.”

“The Cuban Missile Crisis. I was there. I stopped it. Then both the Soviets and the Americans tried to bomb me and Charles and even one of their own humans.”

“ _You_ stopped the Missile Crisis? Seriously? They never said that in school.”

Lehnsherr snorts. “There are a lot of things the American public education doesn’t tell you. But that’s a story for another time.”

“Okay, so that’s two times. What’s the third?”

Lehnsherr says nothing and continues to say nothing even though the silence stretches on into unbearable territory.

“Okay, so two times humans were assholes and now you want to wipe them all out.”

“I never said I wanted to wipe them all out, just the ones who stood in my way.”

Peter remembers exactly what Lehnsherr said on T.V. and then his mouth falls open. “Oh my God. You want to rule the world. My dad’s a fucking _super villain_!”

“ _What?_ Where the hell does that even come from?!”

“I read a lot of comics. And you totally are. You’re totally a super villain who wants to take over the world!”

Now the hysterical giggles break loose, spilling out of his mouth like water from a broken damn, tears popping out the sides of his eyes. Peter leans against the door and laughs and laughs and laughs and to Lehnsherr’s credit, the man just drives and waits for them to dry out.

“Are you quite finished now?” the man asks dryly once Peter quiets down. “For the record, I am not a ‘super villain’.” The word comes out awkward, with the sonic version of air quotes. “I am a revolutionary and while I realize that my methods may seem . . .extreme to some, I do it for the good of our kind. You included. I can’t sit back and watch mutant kind be systematically oppressed for something they have no control over and do nothing. Unlike _some people_.”

Peter bites his lip and looks out the window. He knows that being a mutant is like having a target on your back. He’s lucky because he’s too damn fast for anyone to start any shit but he also knows that other mutants aren’t so lucky. It’s not that Lehnsherr doesn’t have a point, it’s not even that the guy is willing to get his hands dirty to protect other mutants.

No, what really freaks Peter out is how causal Lehnsherr is about taking human life. Like, he didn’t bat a fucking eyelash when he walked past those dead men at the Pentagon or pointed all those guns at the president. And he would do it again, and again, and again to anyone who didn’t agree with him and where is the fucking line, man? This guy doesn’t have one and it's terrifying.

Not that Peter would tell him any of that. Adults don’t listen to him or take him seriously even when they’re not crazed “revolutionaries”.

Instead he says, “So you never said where we were going.”

Lehnsherr’s mouth sets itself in a grim line. “I’m taking you to Charles Xavier. He will be able to help you, keep you out the authorities’ hands.”

“The hippie guy? You think he can help?”

“He had better,” Lehnsherr growls. “He dragged you into this mess.”

Peter valiantly ignores the pinprick of warmth in his gut.

“What’s up with you and that guy anyway?”

He doesn’t want to know, actually. But the distinctly uncomfortable look on Lehnsherr’s face is worth the potential gross factor of the answer.

“Charles and I used to be friends. . . . He saved my life.”

Peter’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? Cause he looked like he wanted to kill you last I saw.”

“We had a falling out,” Lehnsherr says tersely.

“ . . .bad break up?”

Thank God Lehnsherr’s power isn’t, like, laser vision or Peter would be fried right now.

“No more questions.”

Brrr. “No problem. I’ll just take a nap.”

Peter plucks Lehnsherr’s hat from the floorboard and puts it over his face. His nose catches a whiff of something suspiciously familiar. It takes a moment to place it: it’s his shampoo. He and Lenhsherr use the same shampoo and this simple fact jolts Peter from the abstract idea of fatherhood and into the startling reality that he _shares his DNA_ with this guy. They are irrefutably, irrevocably connected, and even though Lehnsherr’s a homicidal maniac and Peter’s just a dumb teenager who can’t pass Spanish, they could have a hundred other similarities.

They could share a preference for runny yolk in their eggs and an irrational fear of butterflies. They could both be night owls and baseball lovers and coin collectors. They could both sleep on their right sides and chew their thumbnails and jump over the bottom two stairs. It didn’t really hit Peter until now, but _this guy_ is the reason why he prefers silver to gold, why he sings in the shower, why he likes shampoo that smells like sandalwood.

It’s enough to make his head swim and he tears off the hat so he doesn’t have to keep smelling it.

“Do you do everything fast, including your naps?” Lehnsherr asks wryly.

“Slept in the cell. Can’t sleep now. Are we there yet?”

Lehnsherr gives him a thoughtful glance. “How fast can you move?”

“Really fucking fast? I don’t know. It’s not like I got a speedometer.”

“This pace must be killing you, then.”

Peter gives the man his most pitiful look. “You. Have. No. _Idea_.”

“I suppose I can’t have you die after going through all that trouble tonight.” Lehnsherr’s casual tone sends prickles the back of Peter’s neck. “You should rest your neck against the head rest. To avoid the whiplash.”

“What?” Peter’s head snaps back against the seat as the car shoots forward on the deserted highway like a fucking rocket.

“Whip. Lash.”

At first he thinks Lehnsherr finally decided to use the fucking gas pedal until Peter notices the eerie silence. There is no sound of the engine revving, or the tires squealing on the pavement –

Holy hell, Lehnsherr is _levitating the fucking car_. They are going approximately really fucking fast and staring at the white divider lines melding together makes Peter feel weightless, like he can finally breathe. He rolls down the window, closes his eyes, and sticks his head out like a dog. The wind beats against his face and steals his breath away and the highest high wouldn’t feel as good as this. Fuck you, Feds! You can’t catch the motherfucking Quicksilver! He climbs halfway through the window, hollering and pumping his fist, until a strong grip yanks back into the car.

“You’re gonna fall out,” growls Lehnsherr, but his mouth sports that monster grin and his eyes glitter.

They zoom all the rest of the way to New York, which takes less than an hour. At this hour of night, few people accompany them on the highway and the Corvette flies to fast and too silent for even the spare cop to do much about. Lehnsherr only slows down when they turn onto the gravel drive of the Xavier estate. The car crawls to a stop several yards from the entrance of a fucking castle. Who the hell does Xavier think he is, a lost princess?

Lehnsherr’s hand hovers above the door handle and then drops, slowly and sadly away.

They sit in god awful, unbearable silence, like they just got through the most awkward first date ever. Seriously, what the fuck do you say to your psychopath dad after he murders fifteen people to spring you from prison?

Peter sticks his hand out. “So . . .uh . . . thanks, you know, for busting me out. Guess that makes us even. It’s nice to meet you . . .formally.” Fuck, Peter. Just stop talking. Just close your mouth and get the hell in that castle.

Lehnsherr grips down on Peter’s hand like a calloused vice and doesn’t release him after the appropriate two seconds.

“You don’t _have_ to go with Charles,” he says.

Peter swallows and feigns ignorance. He was hoping to speed out of here before this conversation could happen. “But . . . you just took me to his house.”

“You’ll be safe with Charles. But I think you crave the kind of excitement that safety cannot give you. If you leave with me, I can give you that excitement. You have considerable skill and potential. You could be a great help to your mutant brothers.”

“No fucking way, dude. I draw the line at grand larceny. I don’t kill people.”

Lehnsherr raises an eyebrow. “I’m not just a murderer, you know. There are other ways you can help.”

“I . . .”

It’s tempting to go on the lam with the bad-ass father you’ve always wanted in a brand new Corvette and finally feel like you have no limits on your powers. Lenhsherr is right – Peter is so fucking bored all the time and the older he gets the more optional the rules feel in favor of his entertainment. And until very recently, he didn’t have any morality crisis about that. He felt cool. He felt untouchable.

Lenhsherr, though, Lehnsherr takes the fucking anarchist cake. And that chaos, that ability to go so far, that’s _in_ Peter. He’s gotta clamp down on that or he’ll be the one losing his shit and killing people on T.V. He needs a line and, more importantly, he needs someone who will keep him to that line. As much as Peter would _kill_ to finally have his dad around, Lenhsherr clearly isn’t cut out for that job.

Maybe those freaky dad powers are starting to kick in, but the man finally releases Peter’s hand and smiles. This time it’s heartbreakingly kind and not terrifying at all.

“Peter,” he says. “I’m sorry. You deserve better than me. And I know this is too late; you’re a grown man now. But if you’re ever in trouble, if you ever need help, I will be there.”

“Is that . . .is that because I’m your kid or because I’m a mutant?”

He has to wonder, man. He has to wonder if he was a boring human and not a mutant if this guy would even give a shit. But Lehnsherr lifts his hand, hesitates a bare moment before cupping the back of Peter’s head, his hand warm and reassuring.

“You’re my son. There’s nothing I won’t do for you.”

Well that’s . . .that’s frankly terrifying, knowing this guy doesn’t have any moral boundaries whatsoever. But there is also this weird squirmy thing in Peter’s gut and he has to swallow against the sudden thickness of his throat. What the fuck is this? Tears? For a moment Peter’s pissed, he’s so pissed that the words he’s always wanted to hear is coming out of the mouth of this deranged lunatic.

But one thing that Peter knows in life is that you gotta take what you can get. And if Magneto is all he’s gonna get in the father department . . .well. That’s better than nothing, right? It’s not like a normal father would have broken Peter out of the Pentagon.

“Yeah, that’s . . .” he clears his throat. “Thanks. Thank you. You, uh, you coming in?”

Lehnsherr’s arm slips away and Peter allows himself to miss its reassuring weight for just a second. “No. But tell Charles --” the man shows too many goddamned teeth in that grin “ -- tell Charles I will see him soon.”

Oh yeah. There is definitely something going on between those two, something Peter doesn’t want to touch with a ten foot pole.

“Yeah, sure thing.” Peter doesn’t know if he should hug Lehnsherr or shake his hand or what so he settles on a cocky salute before zooming up to the front door and knock about a thousand times in the space of ten seconds.

A cranky McCoy finally opens the door and blinks at him like Peter is a figment of a bad high.

“Peter? What are doing here? It’s . . .three in the morning!”

“I’m on the lam, dude! The feds got me for breaking that psy – that guy out of prison for you. I need to lay low.”

 _On the lam. Lay low._ God, he sounds like a total bad-ass saying shit like that.

McCoy has to grace to look guilty as he scratches the back of his head. “Oh my God! Is that blood? Come in.”

Peter glances over his shoulder and notices the gleam of moonlight on a glossy black hood-scoop.

Lenhsherr waits for Peter to step inside before disappearing down the driveway.


End file.
